Two quick thoughts:
Jacksonville is the most conservative region in Florida, polling has shown time and time again. So how bad off does Tom Gallagher have to be that the JaxGOP blog features this headline this morning?: "Time to pull the plug on the dying Gallagher campaign."
JaxGOP has not been a Gallagher fan throughout, but still … damn. Add to that his 31-point deficit in the most recent polls in the Republican gubernatorial primary against Attorney General Charlie Crist and you got one big hill to climb if you are Team Gallagher.
On the Democratic side, Rod Smith has been getting some glowing marks from the MSM for going up with television advertising first, saying how it shows yet again how he is beating Jim Davis to the punch. He had to. That same polling mentioned above shows him well behind Tampa's Davis, so he has to start going to a passing game, to use a football analogy.
I saw his ads; they weren't groundbreaking but they weren't bad either. A bit of a confusing introduction to Smith that I don't think fully captures his charisma. Neither Democrat has enough money to run statewide broadcast TV ads from now until the election in five weeks, so it will be a game of cat and mouse between Smith's and Davis' advertisements.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2006.